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There we catch the voice of our own Lionel Johnson, the poet of austere ideals, bruised and forespent by the battle; the poet of faith through an age incredulous. Bravely he faced the conflict, but no longer joyously: the maladie du siècle had touched him.

In approaching his more personal poems, we shall have to face the most serious charge ever brought against Johnson's poetry—the charge that it is lacking in true emotional quality. We are told that his lyrics spring from and express a thought rather than a feeling; and to admit this unreservedly is to imply that Johnson should have confined himself to prose. But can one admit it? The plaintive, eerie melody of "Morfydd" goes sighing through the mind:

One remembers, too, the splendid climax of those later lines, "To Morfydd Dead"—